Jennifer L. Skeem

Mack Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean of Research

JENNIFER L. SKEEM is a psychologist who writes and teaches about the intersection between behavioral science and the justice system. Her research is designed to inform legal decision-making about people with emotional and behavioral problems. Specific topics include improving outcomes for justice-involved people with mental illness, understanding psychopathic personality disorder and promoting prosocial behavior among juveniles at high risk for violence. Professor Skeem's current work addresses a recent surge of interest in the use of risk assessment to inform criminal sentencing—including how this practice may affect racial and economic disparities in imprisonment.

Professor Skeem is an author of about 120 articles and chapters and editor of two books—including Applying Social Science to Reduce Violent Offending, which won the American Psychological Association Division 41 Book Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Psychology and Law. She is past President of the American Psychology-Law Society and member of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mandated Community Treatment. She has served on advisory boards for the Council of State Governments Justice Center, US Administrative Office of the Courts and US Sentencing Commission. Prior to arriving at Berkeley in 2014, she was a member of the faculty at the University of California, Irvine.

One way to unwind mass incarceration without compromising public safety is to use risk assessment instruments in sentencing and corrections. These instruments figure prominently in current reforms, but controversy has begun to swirl around their use. The principal concern is that benefits in crime control will be offset by costs in social justice — a disparate and adverse effect on racial minorities and the poor. Based on a sample of 34,794 federal offenders, we empirically examine the relationships among race (Black vs. White), actuarial risk assessment (the Post Conviction Risk Assessment [PCRA]), and future arrest (for any/violent crime). First, application of well-established principles of psychological science revealed little evidence of test bias for the PCRA — the instrument strongly predicts arrest for both Black and White offenders and a given score has essentially the same meaning--i.e., same probability of recidivism — across groups. Second, Black offenders obtain higher average scores on the PCRA than White offenders (d=.34; 13.5% non-overlap in groups’ scores). Although groups’ scores largely overlap, some applications of the PCRA could create disparate impact — which is defined by moral rather than empirical criteria. Third, most (66%) of the racial difference in PCRA scores is attributable to criminal history — which strongly predicts recidivism for both groups and is embedded in sentencing guidelines. Finally, criminal history is not a proxy for race — instead, criminal history mediates the otherwise weak relationship between race and future violent arrest. Data may be more helpful than rhetoric, if the goal is to improve practice at this opportune moment in history.

After a distinctly punitive era, a period of remarkable reform in juvenile crime regulation has begun. Practical urgency has fueled interest in both crime reduction and research on the prediction and malleability of criminal behavior. In this rapidly changing context, high-risk youth - the small proportion of the population where crime is concentrated - present a conundrum. Research indicates that these are precisely the individuals to intensively treat to maximize crime reduction, but there are both real and imagined barriers to doing so. Institutional placement or criminal court processing can exclude these youths from interventions that would better protect public safety. In this article, we synthesize relevant research to help resolve this challenge in a manner that is consistent with the law’s core principles. In our view, adolescence offers unique opportunities for risk reduction that could (with modifications) be realized in the juvenile justice system in cooperation with other social institutions.

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The UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare's pre-eminent faculty rank top in the nation in per capita productivity. Nationally and internationally recognized as leaders in their fields, our senate faculty conducts cutting-edge research on the major issues facing California, the US and the world. Berkeley Social Welfare field faculty represent a diversity of experience and talents, training and preparing our students to excel as the next generation of social work practitioners, professionals and educators.